The Government's Fattening Food Pyramid

As the Washington Post winds down its five-part series on childhood obesity, we thought we'd take a look at the U.S. government's "food pyramid" to see if it is helping--or hurting--in the fight against obesity.

From 1992 to 2005, the USDA promoted a food pyramid (at right) that showed various categories of food--grains, fruits, vegetables, dairy, meat--and stacked them up in a way to suggest which you should get more of versus which you should get less of.

The old food pyramid, pictured here, surely contributed to obesity. If you tried to follow the guidelines for number of servings of each type of food, you'd likely eat WAY too much. For example, the food pyramid says you should have 6-11 servings of "bread, cereal, rice, pasta" and it includes photos of a loaf of bread, a plate of pasta, and bowls of rice and cereal.

Okay, so let's say you eat six bowls of cereal in one day--the low end of the scale. Whoops--you've probably already eaten too much, and that's without getting to fruit, veggies, dairy and meat. What you couldn't tell from the pyramid is that a "serving" of cereal was meant to be one cup, and that a "serving" of bread was meant to be one slice (not the bowl of cereal or loaf of bread pictured).

Similarly, many of the other food items pictured in the old pyramid constituted more than a single serving under the government's guidelines, but no one would've known that.

Another problem is that most people eat meals that combine these food elements. Let's say that I have a six inch Subway roast beef sandwich on wheat bread, with swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickles, onions, and oil/vinegar. That's actually a pretty healthy meal. It should count for at least two--maybe three--"servings" of bread grains, 1-2 servings of veggies, one of dairy, and one of meat. But how many people would look at it that way? A lot would view it as, essentially, one "serving."

The new pyramid, pictured here, appears intended mainly to get you to eat a diverse diet that includes grains, fruits, vegetables, meat and dairy products. The new pyramid doesn't make the mistake of including recommendations for number of "servings" of each type of food.

Still, it visually suggests that you should eat a LOT of food. At the bottom of the pyramid are pictures of all kinds of different foods. The problem here is that about 3-4 days worth of food are pictured. It certainly looks like you should be eating many portions of each of these. It's probably also no mistake that the dairy side, in particular, looks like you should be consuming quite a bit of milk, cheese and yogurt.

We wish we had some graphics arts skills here at the Curmudgeon. If we could, we'd picture some sample meals--breakfast, lunch and dinner, with maybe one midday snack, that would provide the requisite variety and balance, yet still be reasonably sized.

For example, breakfast would be a modest bowl of cereal, with skim milk, a small glass of orange juice and maybe one slice of toast. Lunch would be a small sandwich, with whole wheat bread, a small amount of meat, one thin slice of cheese and some veggies, with a piece--or couple slices--of fruit on the side and a bottle of water. And dinner could be a variety of things, but what about maybe a roasted chicken breast, side salad, small serving of rice and 2-3 strawberries. Most people--if they aren't already obese--could get by pretty nicely on meals like this. We'd show various other combinations--the point would be to keep the portion sizes reasonable.

The government should do away with the pyramid altogether. They might as well have used a sphinx for all the good it has done.

Childhood Obesity: Help Parents With Portion Sizes

The Washington Post yesterday launched a five-part series on childhood obesity in America. Although the Curmudgeon kids are skinny, this is an issue of interest to us as we see so many young children whose future is already being robbed by struggles with weight and obesity, including many of the kids in our soccer programs.

The Post series is important, but like many debates about obesity and its causes, it mixes together a lot of disparate information, much of which is mere noise. A good deal of the confusion comes from advice about what constitutes good nutrition, versus what will keep kids from getting fat.

Our youngest child undoubtedly has poor nutrition in his diet. He avoids vegetables and has a huge sweet-tooth. But he is small for his age, and skinny. That may in part be due to the struggle to get enough protein in him. But his diet is not going to make him fat, because he eats very little of anything. He's also incredibly physically active.

The point is, you can have a bad diet--nutritionally--without getting fat. Conversely, you can have good nutrition and still be overweight.

The weight issue is a function of how MUCH one eats. As the Post notes today, the difference between what an average person consumes each day and what is burned off by physical activity is about 100 calories. Doesn't sound like much, but over a year that's 36,500 calories, or about 18 days worth of excess food for an adult woman! (Adult women consume approximately 2000 calories per day on average.)

For many who are obese, that calorie gap is actually a good deal higher, too.

In today's article, the Post explored the government's failure to do much about the childhood obesity epidemic. But really, most of the potential actions mentioned in the Post wouldn't accomplish any reduction in obesity. More nutritional labelling, or eliminating trans-fats, or restricting soda machines in schools--none gets at the root problem of people simply eating too much.

What would help? We don't have all the answers, but parents desperately need some easy to use, practical guides to how much food their children should be eating, and they need help getting servings of the proper portion size.

Let's take McDonald's, ubiquitously blamed (for good reason) for America's obesity epidemic. There's no reason you couldn't take your child to McDonald's and get a reasonably sized meal that the kid would like. But the way Mickie-D's is set up, it ain't easy.

For a typical 10-year-old boy, a basic McD's single cheeseburger, with a SMALL packet of fries and a 10 oz. soda would be fine. Sure, it's nice to fantasize about having the child eat something more nutritious, with maybe fruit juice and some real vegetables, but let's start by getting the portion right and then work on the content. The government, and nutritionists, doctors, public health experts, etc., would do parents a huge favor by telling them that such a meal would be okay, instead of saying "don't eat fast food." In other words, the single cheeseburger with a few fries is MUCH better than the "value" meal with Big Mac, "medium" fries and 20 oz. drink pictured above.

Then we'd also have to get McDonald's to make that meal easily available to parents at a price competitive with their larger, calorie-packed meals. Again, if the government were in a position to identify what WOULD be appropriate for McD's (and other fast food outlets) to give a kid as a meal, then maybe they'd comply, or could be embarassed into doing the right thing.

Perhaps the government could also develop a standard system for labelling portions, with an attractive seal of approval for those approved for kids of a certain age.

It would also help to have labels that say something is NOT approved for kids of a certain age. We'd love to see labels on ALL packaged drinks--not just sodas (juice has a lot of calories too)--with more than 10 ounces saying they are inappropriate for children. Other packaged foods could earn similar labels.

You'd be surprised how many parents think they are giving their kids the right-sized portion when they aren't, just out of ignorance. (At our local Wendy's, the "small" combo meal comes with a 16 ounce drink and what used to be called a "large" fries; a lot of parents probably think that looks okay compared to the even bigger other options.)

There are probably other ways to give parents more practical advice on HOW MUCH food is appropriate for their children. We should look for opportunities to help.